By Robert A. Burgelman

Simon & Schuster Inc., Free Press, 2002

464 pages, $32.50

Respected management scholar Robert A. Burgelman is the Edmund W. Littlefield Professor of Management at Stanford Business School. In Strategy is Destiny, he brings together many of his contributions to the field of strategy over the past decade. The book gives a fine overview of the latest thinking about the nature of strategy, set in the fascinating context of a lengthy study of the Intel Corporation’s strategic progress. Professor Burgelman’s framework for the book is not simple, but it rewards study, and the reader is greatly helped by the clear implications and conclusions drawn from each chapter. The triple-tiered structure allows the author to zoom in and out, going from the academic abstractions of evolutionary theory through strategy making to management action on the ground and back again.

The resulting picture is complex and nuanced. Professor Burgelman finds little evidence of the detached, rational strategist here, the staple of business school cases and texts. It seems that corporate strategy rarely emerges from the heads of top management: Usually they recognize it in hindsight as they assess the ventures of middle managers, who are closer to the real action. Thus Intel’s hugely successful strategy of abandoning the memory chip business to focus on microprocessors was under way well before top management articulated it.

Once strategy is recognized and rationalized, however, it has the unsettling habit of destroying the very processes that led to its emergence. The Intel analogy for this process is that of the desert creosote bush that poisons the ground around it, so that no competitive plants may grow there. Managers find themselves trapped because the process and values required to exploit a given strategy often preclude the process and values required to discover different ones.

For Professor Burgelman, strategy making is a multifaceted process that is as opportunistic as it is deliberate. Insights often emerge from the dissonance among the industry, corporate, and venture levels of activity. Strategists have to exploit the core business while they explore opportunities outside the core. And, as in all complex activities, there is an optimal timing and tempo to the process — changes in strategy that are too fast can be just as damaging as those that are too slow. Comprehensive analyses like those in this book only increase one’s wonder at the skill of the management teams who can meet such challenges.